WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 09: U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement about the ongoing U.S. military actions and humanitarian drops in northern Iraq before leaving the White House August 9, 2014 in Washington, DC. Obama is traveling to Martha's Vineyard for a two-week vacation. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 506259909

The conflict in Iraq prompts U.S. airstrikes and concern about deeper involvement.

THE STAKES:

The real challenge is to give Iraq another chance to stabilize itself.

President Barack Obama faces the unenviable task of persuading a war-weary public that taking even limited military action against militants in Iraq is the right thing to do. Even more: It's the necessary thing to do.

Even if we could put aside the specter of violent sectarian persecution and slaughter that the group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria represents, the threat that it could take over a strategic and, yes, oil-rich nation is simply impossible to ignore. At the same time, Mr. Obama's early assessment that the solution to Iraq's problems ultimately cannot be military is quite correct. American involvement needs to focus on encouraging unity governance and steer Iraq away from the sectarian policies that have alienated minority Sunnis and helped fuel militancy.

But selling all this to an American public — and to Congress, as Mr. Obama must and should do under the 1973 War Powers Resolution — will be no easy task. After President George W. Bush's misguided war in Iraq, Americans are understandably leery of a return to that battlefront.

Multiple polls this year show most Americans — more than 70 percent in some surveys — don't think that war was worth the price, a prevailing sentiment since 2006, according to Gallup. And in a Pew Research Center poll in July, 55 percent of respondents said they don't feel the United States has a responsibility to do anything about the problems in Iraq — even if most people also say the problems today stem from the U.S. invasion and our subsequent withdrawal of troops. An overwhelming majority — 75 percent — feel that the main causes are religious and ethnic rivalries, problems the Iraqis must solve themselves.

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Americans' conflicted views are shown by a Quinnipiac poll in June. On the one hand, the poll found, most Americans don't see the turmoil in Iraq as a matter of national interest, nor feel the U.S. should help the Iraqi government deal with militants. Yet 72 percent said that if Islamic militants take over Iraq, it's likely that they will launch a terrorist attack on this country. That poll and others show modest support for airstrikes, drone attacks, or both.

Try basing a coherent foreign policy on all that.

Complicating all this is that crushing these militants may not be a desirable outcome either; it could strengthen Syria's brutal president, Bashar al-Assad, who is dealing with that group in his own civil war.

What's needed here is not large military intervention, much as hawks like Sen. John McCain recklessly urge, but a measured approach that diminishes the Islamic State's threat while continuing to put pressure on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom Iraqi President Fouad Massoum moved Monday to replace, to step aside and allow an inclusive government to form.